


don't weep for me 'cos this will be the labour of my love

by helenecixous



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/F, Getting Together, Slow Burn, and zarya is confused abt it lol, anyway im uploading this in chapters bc it'll be easier to do timeskips and all, does anyone even read overwatch fic anymore, i say enemies really loosely lmao it's just that mercy's very displeased all the time
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-21
Updated: 2018-04-03
Packaged: 2018-12-05 01:51:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 10,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11567841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/helenecixous/pseuds/helenecixous
Summary: “You frontliners,” the healer is muttering, fussing with a bandage that's covering most of Zarya's arm. “Did nobody teach you tolisten?You all come in here, bicep after bicep after bicep, like you do not know how to fight. Certainly you do not know how to defend. And yet none of you will have the decency to die.”





	1. Chapter 1

“Lie still.”

It's the first time in Zarya’s life that she listens and does as she's told without knowing who is instructing her. She closes her eyes, lets out a slow breath, and forces her muscles to relax and sink back into the unyielding mattress. She feels someone prodding her arm, and something dull, like a needle? And somewhere else there's a faraway, consistent beeping. She battles with consciousness for what feels like a lifetime, but what could only be a few seconds, tops, and then slides back into an engineered, medicated sleep.

 

The next time she wakes up the first thing she registers is a bright, harsh light, and the second thing she notices is the fuzzy dull ache in her arm. Instinctively, she moves her fingers, twists her wrist, and gasps aloud. The pain explodes behind her eyes and she grimaces, clenching her teeth and breathing through it as she flexes her fingers once, twice, three times, and  _ breathe. _

“Lie  _ still.”  _ It's the voice from before, and Zarya swims through the opiate fog of what she recognises to be morphine, and eventually manages to turn her head and find the face that belongs to the irritable voice.

“You frontliners,” the healer is muttering, fussing with a bandage that's covering most of Zarya's arm. “Did nobody teach you to  _ listen?  _ You all come in here, bicep after bicep after bicep, like you do not know how to fight. Certainly you do not know how to defend. And yet none of you will have the decency to die.”

A slow smile spreads over Zarya's face, even as she feels the cold sweat on her neck, answering her pain’s siren call like drunken sailors at sea. “You do not want us to die,” she says, and the healer jumps, like she'd not expected Zarya to speak to her. “If you did, you would not be doing such an excellent job of, ah, wrapping me up.”

The healer just huffs and Zarya blinks, and when she refocuses the healer has gone and it's dark and quiet, and she has nothing but the steady lonesome beeps of the machines around her to keep her company.

 

She's discharged after an unspecified amount of time - nobody tells her and she doesn't ask - but she doesn't see the high cheekboned healer again. She guesses that she had been enlisted, that with that anger simmering just below her surface she was probably more use out on the field than in the medical centres, and she doesn't know why but the idea of her healer out in the fray makes something inside her turn cold.

She does so hope to see her again.

 

“So just how strong  _ are  _ you?” Hanzo asks, eyeing Zarya and her arms over the rim of his tankard.

She grins, flexes, drains her own drink and answers, “strong enough.  _ Yebat,  _ fuck, they call this beer? Funny how over here they can take piss and take water and make it bubble and make you pay money to drink.” She looks at the bottom of tankard in thinly veiled disgust. “It is no wonder we get drunk to forget this taste, or to stop minding it. In Russia, we serve only the finest alcohol. Fit for kings and emperors. One sip of  _ our  _ liquor and you walk with the whores and sleep with the angels. It is magical. None of this, this bubbly sewage. Bah! Disgusting!”

“You want another?”

“God, yes. But I will not pay. They should be paying  _ me  _ for drinking this garbage. This  _ musor.” _

Hanzo grins and heads toward the bar, and it takes about five seconds before a group of heroes opens up and swallows him whole. Zarya knows that her drink will take a while, and finds that she doesn't mind. She swings one leg over the bench that she's sitting on so that she straddles it, and observes the room as best she can in the smoky low light provided. She watches friends and family interact, sees Morrison slumped against the bar, gesturing wildly with one hand and slurring what is no doubt fond nonsense (the first time she'd met him it had been in here, she a fresh faced veteran, and he weathered and good humoured and drunk), and watches Tracer and Ana arm wrestle as Pharah looks on impassively.

Zarya looks down into her lap, lets the bustle and the noise surround her and fill her up before she zones it all out and is left in perceived silence. She realises with a pang somewhere in the further recesses of her heart that she is homesick for her family and for Russia and for a time that she wasn't constantly at war. At times it feels like all they do here is fight and drink, fight and drink, drink and fight. 

The bench she’s sitting on moves, and she looks up expecting to see Hanzo and his wide grin, two beers in front of him. Instead, she finds herself looking at the blonde haired healer, who is studying her with an inscrutable look on her face.

“Hello..?” Zarya says, shifting in her seat. She manages to pose it as a question; as a way to get the healer’s name and finally be able to stop wondering about it.

The healer smiles, and it isn’t kind. “I am Angela,” she says. “My friends call me Mercy.”

Zarya nods slowly. “Mercy,” she repeats, tasting the name, seeing how it feels in her lungs and on her lips. “My name is Zarya.”

“Aleksandra Zaryanova, yes. I know.” Mercy’s studying her nails, pushing the cuticles back with an almost unbearable casualness.

Zarya’s thrown. She nods again, and says, “Many people recognise me from the games.”

“No,” Mercy says sharply - doesn’t look up nor does she apologise for her tone. “I do not know you from games. I signed your medical forms.” And then: “The only game I know you play is the joke of your performance on the field.”

At this, she looks up and offers Zarya a sharp twisted smile, as though she really means what she’s saying and revels in the idea that it might cause offense, that Zarya might wither away before her - biceps and all.

But Zarya just smiles genuinely, and laughs. “I do not understand why they call you Mercy,” she says. “You have not one single ounce of it.”

“You should not drink,” Mercy says, looking at the empty tankards before Zarya. “It does nothing but dull your inhibitions. Makes you sloppy, hungover, and unable to concentrate.”

“All I know is that what they serve here tastes like garbage.”

Mercy smiles, and Zarya sees that there’s some gentleness in there, after all. “How is your arm doing?”

“You remember.” Surprised.

“Of course I remember.” The gentleness has gone, has been ushered from her eyes and replaced with a hardness that runs deep.

“Good.” She flexes her arm to prove it, and finds herself wishing suddenly that Hanzo would come back, because looking at Mercy is like looking into the sun and instead of it burning her retinas she’s able to withstand the heat, and she see things in it, flashes of images in the curls of the fire that make something in her gut tremble. The healer bears an extraordinary anger, and a fragility that makes Zarya nervous to be around her. She’s sitting there surrounded by that odd coldness and the faint smell of hospitals and medicine lingering below the heady scent of something like smoke, her gaze fixed on something off to the side, looking as though she could snap at any minute - as if just one wrong word will send her careening off into a spiral of fury.

Mercy shifts, glances at Zarya and then away again, like she doesn’t find the warrior interesting or deserving enough for her attention, and it stings. As Mercy silently stands up and wanders over to Widowmaker, Zarya watches her go, her head spinning, and wonders whether she’d ever inadvertently caused harm to her.

“You met Angela!” Hanzo sits down heavily, and Zarya starts.

“Yes,” she murmurs, her gaze fixed on Mercy’s back as she absently reaches for her drink and takes a long gulp. “I do not think she likes me much.”

He laughs, thumps Zarya on the arm. “Nah,” he says. “She just has to warm up to you. Trust me. Genji’s been after her for months now, but she won’t have any of it.” He pauses, sobers up a little, and leans closer. “She tried to leave twice.”

“Leave?”

“Overwatch.” He nods, and looks over his shoulder at Mercy before he scoots even closer. “I’m surprised you’ve not heard.”

“Well why is she still here?”

“Nobody knows,” he says. “Maybe Ana does - she’s the only one Angie really talks to, but she’d never say. That woman will take everyone's secrets to the grave. Morrison thinks it’s ‘cos she’s contractually obligated to stay. Conscripted, like. I think it’s ‘cos she can’t bear to be away.”

“How do you mean?”

He shrugs, rolls his shoulders and winces. “Apparently she hates war.” He rolls his eyes, as if he has to illustrate how stupid he thinks the statement of pacifism really is. “Took her ages to finally join - God knows how they managed to convince her but I’m glad that they did. She’s one of the best healers we’ve got.”

“I have never fought with her,” Zarya muses, trying (and failing) to imagine Mercy in battle.

“She takes damage for the team like nobody’s business. But anyway, she tried to leave and then got brought back about a year ago. And same again a few months back. Now, nobody thinks that she’s been  _ forced  _ to come back. So I reckon that she sees herself as instrumental in ending this.” He waves his hand around the room. “Not that I think it will ever end, not really, but she knows she’s a damned good healer, and I think she wants to limit deaths or injuries. But she hates that she feels obligated to be here.” He pauses, takes a long pull from his drink, and then wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “And she’s probably giving you a hard time because you look so…  _ action-ready.” _

“Normally the women like the muscles,” Zarya mutters, and grimaces as she drinks more of her drink. She can’t stop glancing over at Mercy, and does so until the healer disappears, and then she slumps onto the table, mostly ignoring the other people who came over to join Hanzo.

She fancies that she’ll get to fight with Mercy soon, that she’ll get to protect her and prove her own competence, that she will then be deserving of Mercy’s grudging respect and maybe even friendship. She fancies that one day the fighting will end and she’ll return home to Russia and a long, long time after the wars she will come across Mercy, who will have softened and become pliable in a life of peace. She fancies that the chance meeting wouldn’t actually be chance (she’s never believed in coincidences), and that it would explain the twisting feeling she’s experiencing now in the wake of the other woman and her obvious disapproval.

She sighs and shakes her head as though her thoughts are a particularly irritating and persistent fly. “I am going to go,” she says, and everyone at the table looks up and nods or waves respectively, and then she's gone, heading not to bed but to the training areas so she can workout and lift and forget about one Angela Ziegler.  _ Mercy _ .


	2. Chapter 2

Angela stands up after being thrown across the mats, brushes herself down, stretches her arms, takes a long pull from her water bottle before she sprints back toward Ana, moving with an extraordinary lightness. They engage in a light skirmish, which is concluded by Ana flipping her heavily onto her back, knocking the breath from her lungs in a warm and dizzying rush.

Ana looks down at her, using her toe to nudge Angela’s side. She states, “You are distracted. That was too easy. I hope you are not this preoccupied when people are pointing guns at you.” It's true. She is. 

Angela huffs and struggles into a sitting position, panting and watching her biceps tremble. “Again,” she says, getting up and bracing herself, feet shoulder-width apart. “Again.”

Ana runs at her and she sidesteps neatly, manages to duck and kick the back of Ana’s knees, sending her sprawling. She flips Ana onto her back and then presses her knee to Ana’s chest, pinning her. She relaxes marginally - a mistake that she catches too late - when Ana smirks and grabs her waist, uses her own weight to flip them and get to her feet in one fluid movement.

Angela pants, closing her eyes and letting herself relax totally against the mats, trying to ignore the frustration that’s coursing through her like something sluggish and burning, taunting her as surely as the beads of sweat forming on her forehead. “Fuck,” she spits, sitting up and grabbing the towel to mop the back of her neck.

“Angela. You need to-” Ana begins, watching as Angela gets to her feet and walks off, away from the mats and the echoes of the training area, balls the towel up and throws it to the floor as she lets the doors slam behind her.

Fucking Overwatch, Angela thinks, peeling off her soaked gym wear and stepping into a shower cubicle. Fucking Overwatch, and fucking Zarya, who got wheeled into the medical wing all those weeks ago, her pulse so faint it was merely fluttering, and fucking Winston who’d run in next to her and wouldn’t fucking shut up about how important this one was, how if you save nobody else in your entire career, Angela, just make sure she walks out of here with all four limbs in tact and a heart that works just fine. And she had - she’d patched Zarya up with stitches so neat and tiny that they were barely noticeable, and in turn Zarya had looked at her with wide, warm, liquid eyes and smiled that smile, and not taken her sharpness as any kind of insult.

And now, here she was, trying to train because it’d been ages since she’d been on the mats with Ana, getting absolutely decimated because she can’t for the life of her actually focus on something that isn’t the way Zarya had looked at her, with that small, inquisitive, and slightly bemused smile, or the way that she could feel Zarya’s gaze on her right until she’d decided to leave.

She hates it. Hates the way she cares for someone so careless - hates that she’s not able to stop or grasp any kind of control over the way she worries, ceaselessly, that Zarya will be brought back in, in the same condition or a worse one, or, worse: that she won’t be brought back at all. That she’ll become one of the lost, one of the greats, that she’ll never see Zarya again and she’ll forever wonder which unmarked grave is hers, and whether she ever actually made it to a grave, as so many of them don’t.

She rinses the shampoo from her hair and steps out of the cubicle, drying off and throwing her clothes back on. She hopes that Ana won’t say anything, that Ana will just chalk it down to a bad day, but even as the thought forms - tenuous and fragile, she knows that the next time she sees Ana she’ll have prepared an endless list of questions and lectures about how she can’t afford to be careless, that careless people end up dead, and there’s no coming back from that. A half of her feels bad, as though she’s somehow let her mentor down, but all she wants to do is go to bed, to rest, to attempt to regain control over her thoughts.

  
  


“You work late.”

Angela starts, almost dropping the cigarette she's holding, and turns around quickly. “Shit,” she mutters. “You startled me.”

“Sorry.” Zarya leans on the wall next to Angela and looks up at the night sky. “It is…” she hesitates, glancing at Angela as she exhales toward the stars. “Beautiful, no?”

Angela nods, finishes the cigarette and extinguishes it with her heel, grinding it into the dry dirt. “Yes.” She looks at Zarya, searching for injury or illness without even realising it. “Should you not be drinking, or sleeping, or shooting at people who do not deserve to be shot at?”

“You do not like the war.”

“And you  _ do?” _

Silence, and then: “Fair enough.”

“Why are you here?” She'd meant it to sound abrasive, cold, and she winces in the darkness as she realises she just sounds weary.

She feels rather than sees Zarya shrug beside her. “Ana said you would be here,” she says, as if that explains why she was asking for Angela in the first place, and as if it also explains why she had taken it on herself to appear.

“People mostly do not heal on their own,” Angela says, making a mental note to grill Ana the next time she sees her. “I'll ask you again, Aleksandra,  _ why are you here?”  _ Now, she turns to face Zarya, studies her face in the gloom of night, interrupted only by the cold lights inside. Zarya is still looking out into the vastness; at the stars, at the horizon, at the clouds, or the flat plains of nothing that span for miles and miles and miles. She looks content, and Angela wonders how anybody who must kill people for a living can be  _ content.  _

“I wanted to see you.”

“I- what?”

“I never thanked you.” Zarya gestures to her arm, and then to her chest. “Winston told me I was, ah, not looking so good.”

“He's right,” Angela says. “You were not.”

Genji’s tried this one on her countless times; sending flowers and cards and letters, all of them detailing his immense thanks, even if she had healed something as trivial as a headache. She wouldn't put it past him to come in complaining of a paper cut, and then propose marriage when she throws some antiseptic cream at him, muttering obscenities under her breath. But this, here? With Zarya? Coming from  _ her, _ it feels genuine. And she can't find it in her to launch into her typical tirade of how healing people is her  _ job,  _ and how annoying would it be if everybody swamped  _ them  _ with thanks every time they pulled a trigger? Somehow, for some reason, she's touched. So she just nods slowly and allows herself to smile. 

“You ought to be more careful,” she says. “I will not be here forever. But, even so…” She clears her throat and joins Zarya in looking out at the sky. “You are welcome.”

“Do you always work this late?”

“Yes.”

They both turn and look through the windows and doorway into the empty wing, silent save for the hum of the lights. “And you do not condone drinking, but you smoke.”

“When you do a job like this one, you need  _ something  _ to keep you from killing the patients yourself.”

“Are you going to leave again?”

Angela shrugs, leans against the doorframe. “Maybe,” she says.

“Do you  _ want  _ to?”

Somehow, no. Not anymore she doesn't. She likes the way Zarya looks at her; likes the way it makes her  _ feel.  _ As though she's being seen, not just looked at, as though she's truly appreciated, in a way that nobody else does, not even Ana.

“Maybe,” she answers. And then she sighs. “Do you think it will end?”

“The war? It is impossible to say. I hope it does.”

Angela nods. “Yes,” she says quietly. “I do as well.”

There's the sound of a door slamming inside, and Zarya turns. “I should go,” she says. “Tomorrow, I have to go-”

Angela ignores the way her stomach twists, pretends that she's angry just because more fighting is happening, and not because she's been reminded of the fragility of this life, of these people, her friendships. “Go,” she says, and then, “pay better attention this time,  _ dummkopf.  _ I’m running low on bandages.”

Zarya grins, and Angela is struck by her youth, her optimism, her recklessness that she will probably never outgrow. “Yes ma'am,” she says, and then she's gone, leaving Angela alone again. 

She lights another cigarette, tips her head back and exhales shakily, playing with the lighter and watching the flame flutter in the light breeze. “Aleksandra?” she calls, just before Zarya gets through the doors. 

“Yes?”

“Come by tomorrow,” Angela says. “When you get back.” She watches Zarya pause, one hand flat against the door. 

“Okay,” she says, simply, and then she slips through the doors and Angela is left swimming in the silence.

 

She rises early the next day, heads straight to the training areas and fights with Hanzo, teaching him to defend himself better. She is flung across the mats more times than she can count, but she's still better than him, still with higher endurance and better stamina and less arrogance.

“You are not as good as you think you are,” she warns him as she takes him down with relative ease.

He huffs and tries again, and again, and again, and each time she uses his own strength against him until he's bent double, panting, and grinning. 

“Getting better!” he declares, wiping his forehead with his t shirt, and then he leaves, and she moves to the weights.

She lifts until her muscles are quivering and she's forgotten all about the battles happening elsewhere, lifts until she can think of nothing but the white pain in her arms and shoulders, and then she hits the treadmills, and runs until she physically can't anymore. She knows that her weak points lie in combat, knows that if Ana were around she'd be making her work on her reflexes and her aim, and her stubborn unwillingness to draw her gun and her absolute refusal to shoot to kill.

_ They will not be so kind,  _ Ana had said, refusing to let Angela leave until she had fired twenty blanks at the targets.

Angela had eventually caved and done it, and then once Ana had left she'd worked on her staff, worked on its reach and its durability, tried to find a way to split the streams - to heal or assist multiple people at once.

As she showers and heaves herself to the medical wing she remembers the only time Ana had been so furious with her she had actually yelled, because she had found out that Angela had been healing members of the opposite team (she'd been convinced, and still is convinced, that each participant of this war is only here because they  _ have  _ to be, and nobody,  _ nobody,  _ she thinks, should die because of a sense of misplaced duty).

 

She treats maladies throughout the day - Tracer with a bloodied hip after a particularly vigorous bout of training with Jack, Genji three times with a headache, an unexplained rash, and a 'fever’ respectively, and then Fareeha had come in to chat.

And she tries so hard to stay focused, but she knows she's being snappier than usual, more abrasive and intentionally antagonistic, even for her, and finds that when she's not keeping busy she catches herself staring through the windows, absently fiddling with pens and paper and waiting for time to pass. It makes her angry; that her concentration has been fractured, that every time the doors open her attention is instantly commanded, that every time she sees that it isn't Zarya walking in she wants to break something. She doesn't even get this worried about Ana (although that's probably because she's well aware that Ana will not only stay away from the main fray, but that she is also more than capable of holding her own). But Zarya is negligent - she knows because she's heard enough stories from the others, told over uproarious laughter and many empty tankards of beer; tales of Zarya's carelessness that, in the face of survival, somehow are considered funny. And her latest injury is testament to her unhesitating pride and her tendency to jump in front of teammates and deploy her shield just a fraction of a second too late. She's so young and hot-blooded, so ready to die for an idea that's become so convoluted over time that it's practically been lost.

Angela isn't even sure that Winston remembers what they're doing here anymore.

 

It's late when they come back. Reaper is wheeled in with a broken arm, and Lúcio with some mild burns from an explosion, and Angela works hard to keep her composure and not ask about Zarya - fearing the worst and hating herself for it. She sends both Reaper and Lúcio back to their bunks after a record of thirty minutes, and sits on the edge of her desk, waiting to be given the list of fatalities by Winston.

It takes what feels like years for the doors to open and for Zarya to enter. The relief that surges through Angela is enough to make her want to punch Zarya in the face for not coming sooner, enough to make her want to punch both Reaper and Lúcio for not mentioning in even an offhand way that Zarya is alive.  _ (Although why would they? _ some part of her wonders.  _ Zarya is nothing to you, and they know it as well as you do. Why would they have mentioned anything about her? Why should they need to?  _ They're questions she doesn't think she wants to know the answer to. She just wants to sleep until the war is done and not start giving a shit about people who are bound to die.)

She looks up at Zarya, who looks tired and bruised but mostly okay. “You survived,” she says.

“I  _ can  _ fight,” Zarya returns. “They only tell you the stories that make them laugh, and the only thing that makes them laugh is incompetence.”

There's a moment of silence that descends upon them, hot and sticky and uncomfortable.

“You were worried.”

“No.”

“You were.”

“Why would I be worried? I've been busy.”

“Keeping yourself busy so you do not worry.”

“Aleksandra,” she sighs. “You are not as good as you think you are.”

Zarya just laughs and stretches her arms above her head before rolling her shoulders and grimacing. “I bet you say that to all the girls,” she grumbles. “You were worried,  _ Angela. _ You were worried about me.” (The thought delights her, almost as much as the flushed embarrassment that Angela is sporting.)

Angela rolls her eyes, realises this isn't an argument she's going to win, and also realises that although Zarya looks ready to drop asleep where she stands, she doesn't want her to leave.

“You're a child,” she huffs, and then, “do you want a cigarette?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so the training bit between angela and ana was inspired by firelordazulas' fic 'catch my name for kicks' https://archiveofourown.org/works/7764181 so go read that if u want a gay version omg !!


	3. Chapter 3

Zarya rises early, gets up with the sun, and heads to the gym. She's been training more intensely, been paying more attention to her weaknesses (grudgingly), and her strategies in the field (secretly). She doesn't spend too long puzzling it over, knows that she's doing this mostly because she can't stand the way Angela's lips tighten when she comes back after a battle, can't bear the way she obviously can't help but silently check Zarya over for the injuries she expects to see.

So she benches more, benches for longer, lifts heavier weights, pushes herself in a way she hadn't had to do since she was training for the games, pushes until her body burns and quivers and endorphins are the only things that battle her fatigue.

“Somebody should be spotting you.”

Zarya jumps, almost drops the bar, opens her eyes and stares up at Angela, who's watching her with disdain. She carefully places the bar back on the rack and sits up, panting.

“If you drop two hundred kilogrammes without somebody spotting you you'd be dealing with a cracked or broken sternum, broken ribs, and maybe a dislocated shoulder, at best.” She pauses. “And you probably would not want to hear the lecture I would give you while attempting to patch you up.”

Zarya grins. “You could do it,” she says. “I know you would send me back out here as good as new.”

“ _ Dummkopf _ ,” Angela mutters, and then rolls her shoulders back. “Let me spot you.”

“You couldn't.”

“Says who? Aleksandra. If you will not let me spot you then you mustn't be doing this until somebody else comes in. Which will be a while, seeing as everyone is either sleeping away hangovers or fighting right now.”

Zarya eyes her dubiously, before she sighs and shrugs. “Alright,” she says slowly. “If you can.” She watches Angela nod, watches the way the light streams in from the high windows and drowns the gym in pale morning sunlight. Angela shouldn’t even be up - the point of training at these ungodly hours is that she gets the gym to herself, and if she  _ did  _ happen to drop anything on herself and crush anything, she could bleed to death in peace and not have to deal with the humiliation that would come with something like that being witnessed. But here she is - here they both are - and Angela is stretching her arms high above her head, and Zarya would be impressed by the focus on her face if she wasn’t so busy being flustered and distracted by the way Angela’s t shirt had been pulled up and her midriff exposed.

“Ready?” Zarya asks, laying back across the bench and exhaling in three quick puffs as Angela positions herself behind her. Zarya grips the bar, takes a second to adjust her fingers, and then pushes it up and off the rack. She does five reps, and looks up at Angela. She wants to see whether she can do it, so she nods, and Angela grabs the bar and, to Zarya’s dismayed surprise, lifts it from her and places it back on the rack.

Zarya sits up, rolls her shoulders, and then stands, looking at Angela with her surprise evident all over her face.

“You underestimate me,” Angela states, but her arms are shaking slightly as she brushes her hair away from her face.

“You underestimate  _ me,”  _ Zarya points out, raising her eyebrows. “I can fight, and you can lift.”

“Is that what you wanted to prove?”

“Is that what you wanted me to prove?”

Angela watches her in silence for a few seconds, with nothing but the air conditioning firing up to break the slow and creeping silence. “Maybe it was,” she says eventually, and turns away. She heads to the door and Zarya stands still, watching her leave, and then runs after her, catching her arm and making her turn around.

Angela’s eyes are guarded again, as much as they were the first time Zarya met her, and something like regret tugs at her heart.

“It is not your job to look after every person here, Angela,” she says. “We know why we’re here, and we know the risks. None of us would be fighting if we could not.”

“None of you are as good as you think you are,” Angela hisses, and there’s a real fury in her eyes. “This whole thing is so fucking stupid. You’re so  _ young,  _ Aleksandra, is this the life you really wanted to have?”

“I wanted to have a life where I was safe, and the people I love are safe. And since that- that cannot happen right now I want to make sure that it will, one day.”

Angela says nothing, just watches Zarya for a long minute before she pulls her arm back and turns away. This time, Zarya lets her go, lets the quiet descend and turns back to the empty gym. She takes a long pull from her water bottle, mops her forehead, and gets on the treadmill. Angela is a lost cause, she decides as she runs, and she's tired of never knowing where she stands. And yes, alright, the healer gets her feeling some sort of ways; fluttery and defensive and hot and feverish and nervous and clammy and  _ happy _ , but it's a crush. It's just a crush.

“It's just a crush,” she mutters almost subconsciously. “Just a crush. And you have gotten over crushes before, Zaryanova. Pull yourself together and  _ forget her _ .” But even as she says it, feeling like she's flying on the treadmill, with nothing but the sound of her feet slapping against the belt and the heavy whirring of the machine to keep her company, there's a part of her that knows she won't get over this one. Not unless Mercy leaves or, god forbid, dies, Zarya's going to be thinking about her for a long, long while, and she's going to squirm under her gaze and she's going to lie in bed at night not thinking of much else unless something changes. She swears rapidly under her breath, unleashing a flurry of curses as she turns the machine up faster, faster, faster, faster _.  _ “Forget her. Forget her. Forget her, damnit.”  _ Faster. _

 

“Angela.”

The doctor turns, almost knocking over the antiseptic serum on the table beside her. It's late; the darkness thick and sticky and it takes a second, just a second, for her eyes to adjust and for her to place the voice. At first she thinks it's Ana, or Fareeha, but no, no, it isn't, it's-

Zarya emerges from the darkness, and Angela's first thought is that she's drunk, that she must be, and then she looks closer and no, Zarya isn't drunk. She's not drunk, and she's watching Angela with an intensity that makes Angela instinctively take a step backward.

“Aleksandra,” she says, gesturing to bed between them that's occupied by a sleeping Morrison. “Hush. He needs to rest.”

“Do you have a minute?” Zarya asks, and the look in her eyes is still there, still as determined and as fiery as it had been when she came in. In that moment Angela wonders what it would be like to be held by Zarya, how it must feel to be wrapped up in her, how  _ safe  _ it must be to fall asleep with her. And then she wonders what it would be like to kiss her, to thread her fingers through that shock of pink hair and to tug it and kiss her and kiss her until her lips are plump and reddened and she's gasping beneath her. Oh how she could make her warrior writhe, how she could make her beg, if only she had the chance-

“A minute, Angela?”

She feels her blush creep up her neck and kiss her cheeks with the heat from Satan himself, and she clears her throat, embarrassed as though her decadent thoughts are somehow visible, somehow obvious. “I- yes. Yes. Outside?”

Zarya nods shortly and Angela thinks she's misread the funny look on Zarya's face. At first she'd thought it was anger but now? Now it's something else. That glint in her eye isn't fury, the colour in her cheeks isn't from alcohol. It's from passion, Angela suddenly thinks, and she's following Zarya to the doors almost blindly, floating like she's in battle, thinking  _ my god, my god, she wants me. _

The doors swing closed behind them, and then there's silence as she waits (nervously) to hear what Zarya has come to say. She tries not to stare, tries not to think about the things she could do, the things that Zarya could do to  _ her,  _ and  _ pull it together, Angela, for god's sake what's gotten  _ into  _ you?! _

“Aleksandra-” she starts, looking anywhere but at her, her heart crawling up her throat because Zarya is standing suddenly very close to her and the air is thick and heavy and this whole thing tastes like danger. “What is this about? I have patients waiting. More will be brought in soon, I'm sure.”

“They'll manage without you for a moment.”

And there's that  _ thing  _ that's driving Zarya, there in her voice that's pitched low and is very  _ close _ and Angela can't look up, she can't figure this out so she'll just wait, wait for it to become apparent. She needn't wait long.

Zarya steps even closer, so close now that if Angela looks up she might suffocate, because there is no oxygen left in the space between them, and then Zarya's hand is cupping the side of Angela's neck and that forces her to look up, startled, and  _ oh.  _ Zarya is looking at her like she's starving and Angela is the last thing on earth that could sustain her. She's staring at her, taking her apart with her eyes, and then she smirks, and the stillness shatters.

Angela moves forward, magnetised, presses herself almost completely against the solidness of Zarya's chest, her hand still warm and heavy against Angela's neck. And Angela pours toward her like water being controlled by the moon, and then Zarya is backing her against the cold brick wall behind her and her hand is in Angela's hair and they watch each other for a split second; faces half lit by the moonlight.

“Aleksandra Zaryanova,” is all Angela manages to whisper, so close to Zarya that she can feel each steady exhalation against her lips, and then Zarya kisses her so urgently and needily that Angela's knees buckle and she is sure that she'll fall, but Zarya is holding her so tightly that she's safe to melt. And then they're tugging, pulling each other closer, fighting to express themselves and their anger and frustration, pouring it all into this moment, this fraction of a moment that lasts for hundreds of years. She can taste blood and she's not sure who it belongs to, but she's falling in love with the weight of Zarya's hands on her waist, and she's dying a little for each small sound that Zarya makes, these tiny things in the back of her throat, and Jesus as she lives and breathes, Angela swears she would let every single one of her patients die if it meant she didn't have to come away from this.

 

“Angela?” That  _ is  _ Ana. “Angela, fuck.  _ Angela.” _

She wakes, and immediately presses her fingers to her lips, her stomach sinking as her dream loosens its grip on her and slips away slowly. “What is it?” she asks, too tired to snap. “Ana?”

“Winston needs us.”

She struggles to sit up, blinking in the half light and registering the dull panic that Ana is carrying in the lines of her face and her quiet tone.

“They came back,” Ana explains, pulling the duvet off her and throwing her a hoodie. “Many fatalities. But the ones who got back, it's McCree, Lindholm, and Zaryanova. They need us. Come on, Ziegler. Hurry.”


	4. Chapter 4

Angela  _ flies _ down the corridors, Ana close behind her, and when she bursts into the medical wing she can hear nothing but the blood rushing in her ears so loudly she feels like she will drown on dry land. McCree is the one who's in the worst shape, so she forces herself to tend to him first with shaking hands, and for once, Ana doesn't complain or try to argue when Angela barks orders at her. She stabilises McCree and tells Ana to sort Lindholm as she tries not to run to Zarya's side. 

The frontliner is barely conscious (again), she's covered in blood (again), and as Angela checks her over with light fingers she finds broken bones and shrapnel embedded where it definitely should not be. She bites back tears of relief - she'll live - and fury, and cuts Zarya's shirt open, trying to steady herself as she begins cleaning the area around the largest wound. She forces herself to not look up at Zarya's face, to not watch the way her eyelids flutter and twitch, to not pay attention to the way she is so, so, so pale.

Silence descends for a second, and then Angela frowns. “Ana?” she calls, and Ana appears at her side.

“What is it?”

“I do not recognise this pattern,” Angela murmurs, running her fingertips over Zarya's midriff. “She was healed, but not by any of our healers. Not by a pack, and obviously not for long.”

Ana leans closer and Angela steps back, and when Ana straightens up again she is almost as pale as Zarya is. “I, uh, I recognise it.” She won't meet Angela's eyes, and her lips are drawn, her mouth set and stern and worried. “But you are right. It is nobody from here who did this.”

“Not an enemy?” Angela questions. 

“No. Well, maybe.” Ana glances at Angela. “I think you are the only person who will heal the other side.”

Angela ignores the dig and resumes cleaning Zarya up. “Who is it?” she asks. 

“Her name is Moira,” Ana says, and her tone is so final that Angela knows not to push.

Together they stabilise Zarya and when Angela sits down heavily beside her, Ana leaves quietly, looking more preoccupied than Angela has ever seen her mentor. 

 

It feels like Angela has been there for a lifetime, leaving Zarya's side only so she can smoke - and smoke she does. She finishes an entire pack before Zarya even moves, and has time enough to think back, to the first time she met the frontliner, to when she healed her with nothing but the anger that the war pulls out; no worry or personal feelings whatsoever. But now, this time, she feels like her world is ending, the worry and fear she feels is eating her up mercilessly, and she doesn't know why. She's furious with the war, furious with Zarya, how  _ dare  _ this life threaten the only good she has felt in years, how dare it try to take that from her? But she is also worried about Moira, this unknown person who obviously has history with Ana, this person who Angela has never heard of before. Why did she try to heal Zarya? Who is she? What is she to Ana? What is she to  _ Zarya?  _ And the one person she could pose these questions to is floating in and out of a morphine cloud. She smokes some more, watching Zarya like if she looks away for just one second Zarya might disappear in a cloud of smoke. And then, when the sun has risen properly and Zarya has shown no signs of change, Angela permits herself to curl up in the chair next to the bed and sleep.

She dreams of nothing, wakes up every hour on the hour to check Zarya's vitals, and half-heartedly checks on the others too. She notices each time that it's so quiet; there isn't so much as a bird or a person moving around out there and she wonders whether the world finally stopped and is giving her a chance to catch up. She wonders whether the war ended and they all forgot to tell her. She thinks that it's most likely that the war didn't end - there's just no fucker left to fight it.

She takes another look at Zarya's wounds and as she prods, Zarya stirs.

“I thought doctors were supposed to be gentle,” she slurs. “Merciful.”

“If you die, I'll never fucking forgive you,” Angela says dryly, looking up from Zarya's midriff to her face. “I mean it, Aleksandra. I will never fucking forgive you.”

Zarya smiles faintly, her forehead creasing in pain. “Are you going to admit that you like me?”

“Now go on and tell me why I would do that.” She replaces Zarya's bandages quickly and efficiently.

“Aw, because I think that you like me.”

“Shut up, you're half dead.”

“That's why you like me, no? You realise what you could lose.” There's that shadow of a smile again, and Zarya's eyes close slowly as she breathes through her pain.

“No, it is exactly why I  _ hate _ you,” Angela snaps. “I hate you for being wheeled into here again half dead and unconscious and I hate you for finding it funny. I hate you for finding this whole stupid thing  _ funny.” _

“It's funny because it is stupid. It is funny because if it stops being funny it starts being scary and if you stop laughing you must start crying,” Zarya says slowly. “You know that. Laughter is the best medicine, yes? I am not dead and neither are you... but you look it.” She smiles crookedly, and Angela almost hits her.

“Fuck you, Aleksandra. Fuck you to  _ hell _ .” She's surprised by the tears that are in her eyes. “Who is Moira? You  _ would  _ be dead without her I am positive.”

“And I would be dead without Winston and without Ana and without you, it is all the, ah, the team.”

“Only Moira is not on  _ the team.  _ Moira is, what, a civilian? A-”

“I don't know. She was busy saving my life I did not have time to buy her a coffee and get to know her, Angela. Are you jealous?”

Angela brushes her eyes with the back of her hand and glares at Zarya. “If I stopped your morphine I doubt you would be so lucid, so amused.”

“But you won’t do that, you took an oath.” Zarya shifts, trying to find a comfortable way to lie. “Are you? Jealous?”

“I am old enough to be your mother, do you know that?”

“How do you know you are not?” Zarya asks, raising her eyebrow.

“My children would not be idiots.”

“You know I am twenty-eight? You are not old enough to be my mother. And I am failing to see what this has to do with you being jealous.”

Angela turns away, and Zarya can feel her fury, her worry, her hurt. She can feel it as surely as she can feel her own physical pain.

“Is it not our duty to love in war?” she asks Angela’s back quietly, so gently that Angela almost doesn’t catch it.

“Love will not stop bullets,” Angela says, and her voice is thick and slow and tired. She turns to face Zarya, and her face is drawn. “Aleksandra. Blindly following instructions and trusting your team and looking out for them and not for yourself and just  _ hoping  _ is not enough. Hope will not stop bullets, it will not heal you, it will not stop you from bleeding out. Do you understand that? You will not be lucky forever.”

“But I might be, and it is worth holding on to that hope, no?”

Angela starts to speak again, but Zarya yawns, and winces. “I’m tired,” she murmurs. “Shout at me tomorrow, please. Wait - it is important for you to get it all out now while you’re feeling it, it is valid.” She looks around, “do you have some paper? You could write it down or- or record it?” She is rambling and she knows it, and she can’t seem to stop. Fucking morphine, she thinks. She talks and talks until her words slur and quieten and eventually cease as she gives herself over to sleep.

Angela pulls up the chair again and sits down, watching Zarya sleep with a fond and easy smile on her face. She checks her vitals quietly, and knows that tomorrow she will worry again but for now, Zarya is sleeping and she is stable and she is here and that will have to be enough. She reaches out and lets her fingertips run through Zarya’s shock of bright pink hair and then down her cheek slowly, before they find Zarya’s hand and link through her warm fingers. She brings them up and presses a soft kiss to Zarya’s bruised knuckles, and then she allows herself to cry.


	5. Chapter 5

_ I dreamt about you,  _ Angela practises the words in her head, tries to imagine how they will taste.  _ I dreamt about you before you were brought in. I dreamt that you kissed me and then I woke up and I was terrified that you were dead.  _ She tries to imagine the look on Zarya’s face. Would she smile? Would she blush? Would she laugh? Would she be angry?  _ I dreamt about kissing you and when I woke up for a second I did not have to worry that you were injured and for just one second I was allowed to be sad that it was only a dream. I was allowed for just one second to worry about something that was not your life. I was allowed to think about your lips and your fingers and your eyes and I was allowed, for just a second, to think about loving you. To imagine what it must be like to be loved by you.  _ She stares intently at Zarya’s sleeping face, as though by the sheer intensity of her will she could wake Zarya up and communicate her thoughts without words.

She jumps as the doors open and in comes Winston. He’s not hurrying but he looks harrowed and Angela stands up as he approaches, his face twisted and lined in a way that only war can cause.

“How is she?” he asks, and Angela sighs.

“She is not good,” she murmurs, looking down at Zarya’s face. “What happened, Winston? I have never seen anything this brutal, they’re all-”

“Stable,” he interrupts her. “They’re all stable, Angela. Thanks to you and Ana.” He peers closer at her, and shakes his head sadly. “You are exhausted.”

“I have to be here, in case they need anything.” Even as she attempts to justify herself, she can feel the hot pain in her eyes, can feel every blink and each exhalation of breath as if they were a protest. Her joints are screaming at her, and she’s surprised to feel hot tears spilling down her cheeks.

“Angela…” Winston’s watching at her as though he knows exactly how she’s feeling, and then he sighs and looks down at Zarya helplessly. “How long until she is back on her feet?”

“Not for weeks,” she says sharply in spite of the lump in her throat.  _ Jesus, Aleksandra, wake the fuck up and come away with me.  _ She’s looking at him, staring at him in disbelief. “She could die,” she says slowly. “And you are concerned with how long she has to rest for! You are concerned only with when you can send her to be shot at  _ again?” _

“Angela-”

“Don’t.” She turns away from him and picks up her clipboard. “Don’t. I do not want to hear it.”

“We’re in a war, Angela-”

“And you think I don’t know that?” she asks him furiously, wheeling around and marching straight to him. “You think I did not  _ know?  _ You think I am here because I enjoy it, or because I don’t- I don’t  _ understand?  _ You think I  _ want  _ to be here? What are we even fighting for, Winston? Do you remember? Do any of you know anymore?”

He stays silent, letting this woman half his size chew him out. There are still tears spilling down her cheeks, and she looks more furious, more worn out, more defeated than he has ever seen her.

“I-” she breaks off, glances desperately at Zarya, and then she wipes her cheeks with both hands, inhaling deeply. “I cannot stay. I won’t.”

“Angela. Talk to Ana, take some time off if you need it, but we can’t lose you.”

“Why? What is the  _ point  _ of me healing them when you only want them healed so they can go away and return just as broken. They can only take so much! This world can only take so much.”

“So you’ll leave them to die?”

“Better to leave them to die than to send them to die.” She glares at him, and pushes her clipboard with Zarya’s charts into his chest. “See for yourself. She will not be fit to leave for weeks. But please, don’t let that stop you from shoving her out again as soon as she can stand up without assistance.”

She leaves before she actually attacks him, and she walks and walks and walks until she doesn’t recognise where she is. She stops, and lets her thoughts catch up, and she slides down to the ground, lights up a cigarette, and lets herself cry.

 

When Zarya wakes up again, the only person at her bedside is Hanzo. He grins when she opens her eyes, and he sits forward.

“Good morning!”

She groans, shoots him a glare, and reaches for the jug of water on her bedside with a hand that’s trembling.

“Where is she?” she asks.

Hanzo shrugs. “Angie?” he asks. “Dunno. Wasn’t here when I got here. I figured you’d want someone here when you woke up, though.”

Zarya eyes him dubiously. “Why are you not fighting?” she asks, sipping the water she managed to pour. And then, “ _ yebat,  _ fuck, I’m starving.”

“I heard you were half dead. Ana was talking about it, said something about Moira helping you out. Is she finally joining, then?”

“Moira?”

“Yeah.”

“I do not know who she is. I had never seen her before she helped.”

“Oh.” Momentarily, he looks crestfallen, and then he perks up. “Oh well. It’d be good if she did join. She and Angie would get on like a house on fire. Have you ever understood that phrase? I don’t. Apparently it means that they would get on a lot, which is, I think, a lie.”

“Is it?” Zarya is struggling to sit up, half listening to his babble and half looking around as if she expects Angela to be hiding behind a curtain.

“Angie likes a good and strong moral compass,” Hanzo explains. “And, uh, Moira does not have one of those. Or at least, she didn’t, not when I knew her. The nicest thing about her was how much she adored Ana. They were properly in love, the two of them.”

“How do you come to know so much?” Zarya asks him. “Not even Angela knew who she was, so why do you?”

“I’ve been here for a while,” he says. “And when people get drunk they tell you all the stuff you wouldn’t hear otherwise.” He grins at her and then clears his throat. “Anyway… how are you?”

“Okay.” She nods. “I am just worried for Angela. She is never not here…”

Hanzo shrugs. “I wish I could tell you. Maybe she’s just gone to rest.”

 

“Angela.” Jack Morrison is standing over her, and briefly she wonders how long he had been there for. He sits down heavily next to her, and she wordlessly offers him a smoke, which he accepts. He lights up, exhales, and she feels his gaze on her.

“Winston sent you?”

He nods, and shrugs off his jacket before he drapes it over her trembling shoulders and she smiles a little and draws it around her tightly. “You want to leave.”

“Yes.”

He sighs. “What about Zaryanova?” he asks softly. “You can’t leave her. She’d be crushed. We all see the way she looks at you, the way she looks when she talks about you.”

“She’d be dead within a week,” Angela mutters, and wipes her cheeks. “I cannot stay  _ because _ of her, Jack. Watching her come in, in such bad states. I cannot see that.”

He nods, and looks down at his feet. “But she needs you, Angie. Hell, we all do.”

“I don’t want to be involved. I should never have come back.”

“You’ve saved my life more times than I can count. Half of this team would have died long ago if you hadn’t returned.”

Angela says nothing. She wants to hate him, she wants to scream at him, to throw his jacket at him and stand and run and never, ever look back, but she’s so tired. She’s so tired with the war, with loving these people, with being responsible for their lives. It’s so stupid. She doesn’t want to hear about how much they need her. She doesn’t want to play god anymore, she doesn’t want to hold their lives in her weary hands anymore.

Her face twists, and he reaches out and squeezes her knee. “I know,” he says. “Nobody enjoys it here, Angie. Nobody likes the war. Not even Genji, believe it or not.”

“Then  _ why  _ do you stay? There would be no war if there were no soldiers.”

“There would be no war,” he agrees slowly, exhaling smoke toward the darkening sky. “But there wouldn’t be peace. There wouldn’t be any hope of safety, or justice. You know that. I know you do.”

She stays quiet, doesn’t want to agree. She wants him to see how much she’s hurting, she wants him to understand how furious she is, but she thinks that there’s a part of him that already does know, that already understands.

“What would you do, if you left? Where would you go?”

She glances at him and then up at the purple sky. “Home,” she says quietly.

“And you would be happy? To ignore it and pretend that your friends aren’t still out here, fighting and dying? To sit and wait for it to find you again? Only when it found you again, you would be powerless against it. You’d be happy walking away from Zarya, and never seeing her again?”

“I would’ve been perfectly happy to do that months ago,” she spits. “Perfectly happy.”

“But it’s not months ago. Whatever is happening between you both has happened, and you’re not the person you were months ago.”

“I hate her,” Angela mutters, hanging her head and clasping her hands in front of her to try and stop them from shaking. “I hate her for making me care!”

“But you  _ do  _ care. And you might hate her for that but you also love her. And it’s not her fault, neither of those things are her fault.”

“She could come with me…” she offers lamely.

“And she wouldn’t. You could ask her, but she wouldn’t. She’s young enough and careless enough to still want to be here. We were that young once, Angie, remember? We were that full of hope, once. And you wouldn’t have left then, either.” He opens his arms and she leans into him, clutching him and trying to stop herself from crying, or caring, or knowing that he is right. “Don’t leave,” he whispers, kissing the top of her head lightly. “It’s horrible, I know, but help us work for something better.”

“Jack-”

“Don’t make me be the one who has to wake Zarya up and tell her that you’ve gone. When this is all over, she’ll leave with you. I know she will. Hold on to that.”

“She doesn’t even know how I, how I feel about her.  _ I  _ don’t even know how I feel about her. I just- I just hate how  _ scared  _ I am to lose her.”

Jack smiles and throws the end of the cigarette away. “I think that’s love,” he tells her, rubbing her shoulder and watching the sun set. “I think that’s what love is, and isn’t that worth sticking around for?”

_ I dreamt that she kissed me,  _ Angela thinks, and in his arms she calms, feels a stillness descend and clear her head.  _ I dreamt that she kissed me, and I didn’t want to wake up from that. I think I love her.  _ She looks out at the horizon, and she shakes her head.  _ I think I love her, and I think that is why I have to leave. But I think she loves me, and I think that is why I must stay. _


	6. Chapter 6

Zarya sees everyone, it seems. Everyone but Angela. Even Lena pops in to say hi, and when Jack comes in he looks sad, and somehow like he knows something, something that breeds a thing that feels a lot like pity in his eyes. She asks him and asks him and asks him whether he had talked to Angela, asks him where she is - “I know you know, Morrison, for fuck sake just tell me” - and when he refuses to answer these questions for the fifth time, she gives up.  
“Just tell me, is she okay?”  
He studies her, his hands clasped between his knees for a long moment before he sits back. “She will be,” is all he says on the subject of Angela, and Zarya has never hated being confined to a hospital bed as much as she does then.  
Eventually she learns that Angela had travelled back to Germany (this information makes her stomach turn and her head spin), but that she’s coming back. She’s gone to negotiate, or to oversee the development of some kind of weapon, or something. Everyone who comes in tells her a different story, and eventually Zarya comes to wonder whether anybody actually knows where Angela is.  
In her dreams, Angela comes in and she tells her that the war is over, that they can leave, and would Zarya leave with her? In her nightmares, Winston comes in and tells someone else that Angela is missing in action, and Zarya knows that she’s not supposed to know that but she can’t help from crying out, some nameless, wordless pain, and the way her lungs feel like they’re collapsing and the way her throat constricts and burns and the way her heart tries to crawl up her throat is all real, and she wakes up gasping for air, clawing the bed sheets and tugging them, twisting them in her fists, and calling out for Angela.  
After a week, she starts refusing to see visitors. She attempts to convince Ana that she is okay now, that she is ready to leave, and each time Ana forces her to lie down again, her lips tight and her face pale. Zarya remembers the first time she met Angela,  
(“Lie still”)  
and she misses that simplicity, misses her life before it hurt. She misses her time at the gym, out in the field, drinking with Jack and her other friends. She gets angry, the more time she spends staring at the ceiling, that she ever met Angela, and furious that she allowed herself to catch feelings for her.  
She used to sleep around, used to love not falling in love, used to be good at the no strings attached deal, used to be happy to submit herself to her body’s needs and happy to meet the needs of others. But since she met Angela, all those months ago, she’s not touched a single other person. Each time she thinks about this she wants to scream, to lash out, to take the vase from her bedside table and fling it at the wall. She wants to watch it shatter, wants to watch the water spray across the floor and drip steadily down the white wall, but, embarrassingly, she still doesn’t have the strength to even hold a cup of water steady enough to drink from.

“Is she okay?”  
“She won’t see anyone.”  
Jack is sitting on the edge of his bed, his phone pressed to his ear. There’s no air conditioning in his room and he’s just three degrees away from becoming a puddle.  
“But she’s still in the hospital? You’re sure?” Angela asks, anxiety colouring her tone.  
“Yes. She’s still not strong enough to even stand, Angie. She’s there, and I think Ana has her.” He pauses, wipes the back of his neck and grimaces. “She kept asking me for you. Torb was in there a few nights back with some burns, said she’s been having nightmares and screaming for you.”  
Angela is quiet, and Jack hears nothing but the muted and steady hum of the phone line.  
“When are you coming back?” he asks.  
“Soon, I think.” She goes quiet again. “Jack?” He can hear the hesitation in her voice, the slow uncertainty that she will always try to mask with anger and speed.   
“Yeah, babe?”  
“Can you do me a favour?”

When Zarya sees Jack slipping into the room, she spits at him.  
“I said I didn’t want to see anyone,” she says, her voice cutting through the dark stillness. “That fucking includes you.”  
“Easy.” He holds up his hands, as though she were a spooked horse. “Easy, Zaryanova. Here.” He holds out his phone to her. “It’s Angie.” He waits for her to take it, and then steps back to give them privacy and also to spend a few blissful minutes under the flow of the air conditioning. He tunes out of the low murmur of conversation, decides not to notice Zarya’s voice, thick with tears, and he turns on the spot. He’s lucky to not have spent much time in here, but he can sense the Angela shaped hole in here as much as everybody else can, and it makes him shiver.

  
Zarya has been Ana’s worst patient to date, Ana says. She looks furious but beneath it, amused, as she hands Zarya’s charts over to Angela.  
“She is the most stubborn, the most irritating, the most obtuse person I have ever had the misfortune to treat. If you leave again like that and leave her in my care, I’ll kill her, and then you.”  
Angela smiles, bows her head slightly and promises Ana that she will never have to treat Zarya again, thanks her, and then pushes the door open and approaches her friend.  
She’s sleeping when Angela gets to her bedside, and Angela quietly checks her charts, checks her vitals, and then she sits and runs her fingers gently through the shock of faded pink hair.  
Zarya murmurs, a small crease appearing on her forehead as she makes the slow journey back to consciousness. Angela waits, nervous, elated, distraught.  
“You need to dye your hair again,” she says softly as Zarya’s eyes open and immediately find her. “Hi.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WELP it’s been a really long time since I updated this and I’m so sorry lmao anyway I’m gonna finish it soon I promise!
> 
> y’all can talk to me on tumblr: santiagoblues.tumblr.com !
> 
> (also my commissions are open if you wanna talk about that just hit me up on there yo)

**Author's Note:**

> title from warriors by imagine dragons innit


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